Unknown's avatar

Matthew, Luther and Bach: Reflections on St Matthew Passion

by

I participated in this public lecture with Berkshire Lyric Music Director Jack Brown and Bass Soloist Doug Johnson. What follows are my remarks.

  1. Who was St. Matthew? As we focus on J.S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion, the question comes to mind, “What makes this Oratorio so great?

We are going to spend some time exploring Bach himself, but there are other elements and influences that are foundational for the work that we want to examine, namely the Gospel of St. Matthew itself, and the Reformation theology of Martin Luther that was so important to Bach’s theology and faith.

We will start with Matthew. “Who was St. Matthew? And what is his Gospel about?”

Matthew’s Gospel is called “The First Gospel” because it is the first of the four gospels in the New Testament canon. But, despite that title, it was not the first one written: that would be Mark, who invented the genre of gospel, which means “good news.”

Matthew knew Mark’s Gospel, but enlarges and extends the scope of Mark’s narrative both at the beginning, with a genealogy and a birth narrative, and at the end, with post-resurrection appearances by Jesus to his disciples.

Without Matthew’s additions to Mark, we would know nothing of the Magi meeting Herod and going home by another way, or the Great Commission to the disciples on the mountain in Galilee, to name just a few.

Matthew’s Gospel is sometimes referred to as the Ecclesiastical Gospel because it contains so much admonition to the church on how to be the church.

Indeed, it is fair to say that the purpose of the Gospel is not so much about giving an account of the historical Jesus, as it written for the church in Matthew’s time and for all time, including ours.

And when was Matthew’s time? Certainly, it was within the last third of the First Century. A.D. And how do we know this? Because in 70 A.D. the Romans under Titus attacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple, something Matthew knew about.

So, his time may have been in the 80’s or 90’s of the first century, some 50 to 60 years after the events he is writing about.

What Matthew has done is in essence collapsing time, so that the events of his passion narrative feel contemporaneous to his generation of Christians. The historical Jesus of Nazareth and the Risen Christ become conflated.

We had a good example of that recently in our Zoom Bible study. In Chapter 18 of Matthew, Jesus is giving admonition on how to deal with conflict in the church.  Jesus tells Peter that forgiveness is inexhaustible. “Forgive 77 times, or 7 times 70!” Then he says “where 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” See what Matthew has done there? Clearly, the earthly Jesus of Nazareth who was soon to die on a Roman cross was not going to always be there, but the Risen Christ of Easter, which hasn’t taken place yet in the narrative will be.

Matthew is addressing his congregation, which we think was a group of Jewish Christians that had been expelled from their synagogue. As a Jewish Christian leader Matthew is keen to underscore that God the Father of Jesus Christ and the God of Israel are one and the same God, and the story of Jesus is in continuity with the Promise to Israel and is the completion of the covenant. That is why Matthew’s Gospel is choc-a-bloc with quotations and prophecies from the Hebrew Bible.

So, Matthew is writing for his own congregation in his own time, but also writing for all the ages, including ours.

I like this notion of collapsing time to make the story contemporaneous, so that it not just a story from long ago, but in some way our story, the story of the church and its Risen Savior, Jesus Christ.

And I think Bach has done this as well in his St Matthew Passion, collapsing time, so that we become witnesses to the Passion and Crucifixion. That what makes this masterpiece so existentially compelling and so moving to each generation of listeners, even to secular folks in the Netherlands.

2. The theology of Martin Luther which Informs Bach’s St. Matthew Passion

For us to understand the theology that informs Bach’s St Matthew Passion we must turn to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, and especially to its most important figure, Martin Luther. Bach was a faithful, orthodox Lutheran, deeply steeped in both the Lutheran theology and the Lutheran musical heritage.

Who was Martin Luther? He was born in 1483. His father wanted him to be a lawyer and he started the study of law but soon abandoned it. After some personal crisis, some say he was caught in a lightning storm and vowed that if God spared him, he would become a monk. Others say it was the death of a close friend. In either case, Luther did become a monk, and dedicated himself to the Augustinian order, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent, perhaps too frequent, confession.

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1507 and started teaching at the University of Wittenberg, where he stayed as Professor of Old Testament for his whole career. From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, and on the books of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, partly with Desiderius Erasmus’ new annotated translation directly from the original Hebrew and Greek, Luther became critical of Catholic doctrines supported by the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible. He began to view the use of terms such as “penance” and “righteousness” in new ways. He became convinced that the church had become corrupted in both doctrine and practice, and had lost sight of what he saw as several of the central truths of Christianity.

In 1516, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money in order to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The next year Luther sent a strongly-worded letter to his bishop protesting the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences”, which came to be known as the Ninety-five Theses.

Indulgences offered full forgiveness of one’s sins in return for a monetary payment. Luther objected to a saying attributed to Tetzel that, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory also springs.” Luther insisted that, since forgiveness was God’s alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.

Luther continued his protestations and refused to renounce all his writings, and in 1521 he was excommunicated by Pope Leo the Third. Eventually the Emperor declared Luther an outlaw and demanded his arrest. 

But Luther had the local prince, Frederick III on his side, and Luther was able to avoid arrest. Luther’s disappearance during his return to Wittenberg was planned. Frederick had him intercepted on his way home in the forest near Wittenberg by masked horsemen impersonating highway robbers. They escorted Luther to the security of the Wartburg Castle at Eisenach. During his stay at Wartburg, Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German and poured out a torrent of doctrinal and polemical writings.

This break with Rome thrust Luther into the role of principle architect of what became known as the Protestant Reformation. 

As we reflect upon Luther’s theology’s influence on Bach, it is helpful to know what shaped it. Remember, Luther was an Augustinian friar, and St. Augustine was profoundly influenced by the letters of St. Paul, especially Paul’s Letters to the Romans and the Galatians, which speak of “freedom from the law.”  The law in Paul’s time was the Jewish Torah, but Luther equated the Roman Catholic teachings on indulgences and other doctrines with Paul’s critique of “works of the law.”

Luther has a robust atonement theology, and you will see this theology of the cross manifest in Bach’s St Matthew Passion, with its powerful images of Jesus as “the lamb of God, slain for the sins of the whole world.”

Luther neatly summarizes his theology in a paragraph in the Smalcald Articles, one of the Lutheran Confessions.  He wrote:

“The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification (Romans 3:24–25). He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans 3:23–25). This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law, or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us … Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls (Mark 13:31).”

By the time of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1827, the Protestant Reformation was a vital religious movement three centuries old, and Lutheranism was deeply established. Luther’s German translation of the Bible had consolidated the German language. In 1455 Johannes Gutenberg had printed a complete Latin Bible using his new movable-type printing press, and the Bible was universally available in German by Bach’s time. 

Luther was also a musician and wrote dozens of hymns that were part of the theology and spirituality of Lutheranism. Bach knew them well. Although he served in secular posts, and as a musician in a Calvinist court, where music was not as important, his heart was as a Lutheran church musician, and from the time of his appointment to St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, he never looked back.

So, Bach’s St Matthew Passion is deeply infused with both the theology and piety of Lutheranism. This choral masterpiece interprets two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel (26 and 27) using Luther’s German translation, through this lens. Both the libretto and the extraordinary music function to collapse time and make us, and every generation who hears it, eye-witnesses to the events of the Passion of Christ and to his crucifixion. The genius of Luther and the genius of Bach combine to bring us this gift.

3. The Faith of J. S. Bach

In Bach’s day the old Christian verities were being challenged by the rise of Enlightenment Science and Philosophy, but Bach held on to the Lutheran faith, not only in doctrine but also in his personal piety. This deep piety infuses his St Matthew Passion with a genuine pathos and a wide appeal, that engages people, even those who do not share his Christian faith.

One of the keys to his faith is in his biography.  Bach’s life was full of loss, grief and suffering. Both his parents died six months apart when he was ten, and he went to live with his oldest brother Johan Christian Bach.

Thomas Hobbes famously described life in the Seventeenth Century as “Nasty, brutish and short.” Life expectancy was around 35 or 40 because of high infant and child mortality. Bach’s first wife, Maria Barbara, had seven children, three of whom died in infancy.  She herself, died suddenly thirteen years into their marriage. His second wife, Anna Magdalena had thirteen children, only six of whom survived to adulthood.

Despite all this, there is nothing melancholy about Bach’s music, which is frequently triumphant and celebratory. He loved and enjoyed his family. And he loved his music.

Following Martin Luther’s theology, he believed all Christians were called to their several vocations or callings. He understood his music to be a divine calling and dedicated his life and music to the glory of God. He often signed his compositions with the initials “S.D.G.” (Soli Deo Gloria – To God Alone the Glory). Since he believed music was a divine calling meant for the “refreshment of the spirit” and to glorify God, he applied this to both his sacred and secular works.

The root word of passion is the Latin verb pati, which means “to suffer,” “to endure,” or “to undergo”. It entered English through the Old French passion and Latin passio (suffering), originally referring to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ before evolving to mean intense emotion or desire.

Bach’s St Matthew Passion is a story of redemption by the suffering and death of Jesus. Like any good Lutheran of his time, Bach would have believed that humans without God are in a state of sin, a problem that we cannot rectify by ourselves. At the end of part 1 of St Matthew Passion Bach employed “O man, bewail thy grievous sin” a famous Lutheran Passion hymn written by Sebald Heyden in 1530.

“O man, thy grievous sin bemoan,

Whence, from His Father’s bosom flown,

To earth came Christ, our Savior;

Of virgin mother, undefiled,

For us was born the holy Child,

To be our Mediator.

Unto the dead new life He gave,

The sick from ev’ry ill He saved,

Until His hour of anguish,

When He would be our sacrifice,

Pay for our sins the awful price,

Yea, on the cross would languish.”

This is standard Christian orthodoxy. The Creed says “for us humans and for our salvation, Jesus Christ came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became human. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

That act of suffering love and sacrifice “does for us that which we cannot do for ourselves.” But unlike other major doctrines no church council ever declared the “how” of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. For centuries the church believed that Christians access the saving act of Christ through the sacrament of the mass, where the sacrifice is literally re-enacted on the altar by the priest.  

Luther and all the other Reformers rejected this doctrine of transubstantiation. With the Bible in Greek and Hebrew newly in his hands, Luther believed that Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross was “once and for all time” and could not be re-enacted. Bach would have believed this. It is often noted that there is no resurrection in the St Matthew Passion. Bach, good Lutheran that he was, didn’t need to put it in since the cross was “a finished work” that itself brought satisfaction and justification to the sinner. The resurrection was merely God’s Amen to the saving work of Christ.

Jesus goes voluntarily to his death out of love. Bach’s faith is on display the way he juxtaposes the crowds “Let him be crucified” with the soprano recitative “He has done well for us all” and the soprano aria “In love my Savior Now is Dying.” “It is out of love that my Savior intends to die, Although of sin and guilt He knows nothing, So that my soul should not have to bear, Everlasting damnation, and the penalty of divine justice.”

Bach knew his share of suffering, but he drew consolation, comfort and hope from his faith in his Savior Jesus Christ. It is this faith, devotion and piety that has given us this splendid masterpiece.

4. “Then and Now” A Reflection on the Gap between Bach’s Time and Ours

The Age of Enlightenment was breaking out in Bach’s time, but he was more a creature of Pre-Enlightenment times. His influences were Martin Luther and the Gospels rather than Voltaire and Isaac Newton.

Bach’s worldview is far from our own. There is an important book by the late Yale theologian, Hans Frei, titled The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. Frei’s thesis is that there has been a radical change in the way people have understood the Bible since the Enlightenment. 

Prior to the Enlightenment, Christians, most of them illiterate, understood the world of the Bible as continuous with their world. In other words, they understood the Biblical story to be their story. They were in it!  They knew the story from statues and stained-glass windows in Gothic cathedrals. They knew the story from catechisms and creeds, from Passion Plays and religious festivals. If they owned one book, it was the Bible. 

With the coming of the Enlightenment and the rise of science a new worldview developed. Empiricism meant that all things were scrutinized, held at arm’s length for observation, if you will. Frei contends that post-Enlightenment Christians, even if they claim the Christian story as their own story, can never be in the story in the same way that Bach was.

The reactions to this eclipse of biblical narrative have varied. Fundamentalists deny modernity and resort to a claimed literalism. Modernists accommodate the Bible to fit modern assumptions of what can be real. I’m thinking, for example, of Thomas Jefferson’s taking scissors to the Bible, cutting out all the parts he couldn’t believe in, such as the miracles of Jesus.

Our worldview is shaped by our time and our experience of it. Bach’s world was a world of ignorance and superstition. Christians believed that God controlled the weather. They believed in witches and demons, and in a literal hell from which God alone could save them.

So, as Post Enlightenment people, when we approach a biblical text, we instinctively ask, “Did this happen? Is it factual?” That is the Enlightenment question. But it wasn’t Bach’s question.

As some of you know, I lead a weekly Zoom Bible study. In that class I often remind them of the relationship of text to context. The text never changes, but the context is always changing. The Gospel of St. Matthew is the same today as it was in Bach’s time, although he read it in German, and we read it in English, if we read it at all.

But the context is very much different. As I said previously, in Bach’s time life was short, infant and child mortality was high. There were periodic famines. Germany had suffered the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) a generation before Bach was born. That war was still in the memory of Bach’s elders. How bad was that war that raged across Europe for three decades? In that bloody war an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from the effects of battle, famine, or disease, with parts of Germany reporting population declines of over 50%.

No wonder that many of the Lutheran chorales, such as the ones Bach employed in the St Matthew Passion, are preoccupied with suffering and death and the sweet consolations of heaven. Death was the context, the lens if you will, with which Bach and his contemporaries viewed biblical texts.

In the academic study of scripture, we refer to the theory of interpretation as hermeneutics, which gets its name from the Greek god Hermes, the herald or messenger of the gods. He’s the guy with wings on his helmet. He is Mercury in the Roman mythology. He’s the guy who flies from here to there, to bring messages from the gods to humanity.

So, Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, of how we get from here to there; how we get from an ancient text to a contemporary meaning. How do we get from a fixed text to interpret it in a new context.

An example of this interplay between text and context I often share with my class is what happened to me after September 11, 2001. I preached from a three-year lectionary of prescribed scripture texts, and in 2001 I’d been preaching for 25 years, which meant the same texts had been before me 8 times. In the fall of 2001, the Old Testament readings were from the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations and were pretty ghastly laments about the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BC. Here’s a sample:

“My joy is gone; grief is upon me;

    my heart is sick.

Listen! The cry of the daughter of my people

    from far and wide in the land:

“Is the Lord not in Zion?

    Is her King not in her?”

(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,

    with their foreign idols?”)

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended,

    and we are not saved.”

 For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken,

    I mourn, and horror has seized me.

Is there no balm in Gilead?

    Is there no physician there?

Why then has the health of the daughter of my people

    not been restored?

O that my head were a spring of water

    and my eyes a fountain of tears,

so that I might weep day and night

    for the slain of the daughter of my people!” (Jeremiah 8: 18)

They referred to “the burning city.”  The previous 8 times I had read them, I thought, what in God’s name could I possibly I say about these gruesome texts? So, I chose other ones. Now, in 2001, with the world trade center burning and falling, a new context brought new life to old texts.

My point, and I do have one, is that we read and hear St. Matthew with very different eyes and ears then the people in Bach’s time. Having said that, the beauty and artistry of St Matthew Passion still invite people in. Invite even secular people in, as we noted about the popularity of the annual Passion in the Netherlands, one of the most secular countries on earth.

So, even if Bach’s world and ours are so very far apart, his musical masterpiece keeps finding and reaching new audiences. A piece of music written in 1727 still engages and thrills us, as you will discover if you are in Ozawa Hall on May 31.

5. Conclusion: What Makes Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion Great? A Reflection on A Work that Transcends its Time

Jack says that many musicians claim Bach as the best musician ever, and that the St Matthew Passion is his most brilliant work. That can be debated, of course. For example, the great Swiss Reformed theologian of the 20th Century, Karl Barth, claimed that when God was in His heavenly court, He listened to Bach, but when He retired to his private chamber, he listened to Mozart. But I think we can all agree that Bach was a musical genius and St Matthew Passion is a great masterpiece. What makes it great?

Let’s start by asking why Bach is great. Here’s the composer who wrote the B Minor Mass, the Brandenburg Concerti, the Six solo Cello Suites and the Goldberg Variations, to name but a few of his masterpieces.

I have a theory. In 2008, the Canadian author, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote a bestselling book called Outliers. Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. To support his thesis, he examines why the majority of Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year, how Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates achieved his extreme wealth, how the Beatles became one of the most successful musical acts in human history. 

Throughout the book, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the “10,000-Hour Rule”, claiming that the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill, is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of around 10,000 hours. 

So, the Canadian ice hockey players born in the first months of the year got more ice time than those born later. Bill Gates grew up in Palo Alto, California and had access to a Stanford University mainframe computer for many years, and the Beatles were the house band, first in Liverpool, and then in Hamburg, Germany before becoming an international  “overnight” sensation.

You get the idea. Now let’s look at J. S. Bach through the lens of the Gladwell thesis. Sebastian, as they called him, was born into a multi-generational musical family. The Bach family had already produced several composers when Sebastian was born in Eisenach, the youngest child of the city musician Johann Ambrosius Bach.

His family, particularly his uncles, were all professional musicians who worked as church organists, court chamber musicians, and composers. Bach’s father presumably taught him the violin, his own primary instrument, along with basic music theory principles.

As I mentioned, Bach’s parents died when he was 10 and Sebastian moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, the organist at St. Michael’s Church in Ohrdruf.  There he studied, performed, and copied music, including his brother’s, despite being forbidden to do so. He also received instruction on the clavichord from his brother. Johann Christoph exposed him to the works of composers of the day, including South Germans such as Johann Caspar Kerll, Johann Jakob Froberger, and Johann Pachelbel (under whom Johann Christoph had studied); North Germans such as Georg Böhm, Johann Reincken and Friedrich Nicolaus Bruhns from Hamburg, and Dieterich Buxtehude; Frenchmen such as Jean-Baptiste Lully, Louis Marchand, and Marin Marais; and the Italian Girolamo Frescobaldi. Sebastian studied theology, Latin, and Greek at the local gymnasium, but he never earned a university degree, something that vexed him throughout his life.

So, even before he had his first post as a musician, he had been exposed to many styles and some of the finest composers in Europe at the time.

By the time he composed St Matthew Passion in 1725 he was forty years old and had put in his 10,000 hours of music. That and his musical genes and exposure to the Bach family business make him an outlier.

Now I must turn to the first half of Jack’s Credo:

“Anything of real value

happens in community, (the solitary agent is overrated)

does not usually happen quickly,

involves steady work and patience,

must have one foot in tradition,

must be nurtured with a bias towards steady positive forward action,

involves mastering some detailed complexity before you get to the brain float,

must be done with love (different than niceness, but crucially includes kindness)”

Bach had put in the work: steady work and patience, and he had one foot in tradition. Tradition for Sebastian was not just his conservative musical tradition, but his deeply held Lutheran faith. We post-Enlightenment people make a distinction between secular and sacred. Sebastian would have made no such distinction. For example, when he was at the court of Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen he composed very little sacred music, since Leopold was a Calvinist and they didn’t employ much music. Still, Bach signed each composition “to God be the glory.” And as one in the Calvinist tradition, I want to go on record that we got it wrong about music and the Lutherans got it right!

A final reason Bach is great is his character. He was a principled man. There is often a fine line between principled and stubborn. We have already seen this in Martin Luther, whose stubbornness kept him from backing down from his principles even when the weight of both church and state were pressuring him to renounce his writings.

Bach could also be stubborn.  He sometimes engaged in petty quarrels over principles with the Leipzig town council, who often treated him quite badly. This stubbornness also served his dogged pursuit of perfection in his art. By the time he composed St Matthew Passion he had had years of writing weekly cantatas for the liturgical year. He had absorbed all there was to be learned from the best composers and musicians in Europe, including Vivaldi, who was a big influence on him.

So, St Matthew Passion was composed at the height of his powers. Like a painter with a full palette, he created a masterpiece that transcends its own time. He was the final flower of the Baroque. He was the best and last of the Baroque, much like Jonathan Edwards was the best and last Puritan.

We are blessed to be able to hear (and sing) this timeless masterpiece.

(Photo: Berkshire Lyric Music Director Jack Brown (left) Me, and Bass Soloist Doug Williams at Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood, Lenox, Massachusetts. 2004.

Unknown's avatar

“Breathe on Me, Breath of God” A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

by

I want to thank you for inviting me to preach in this faithful, historic church. I have known this church since my Andover Newton days more than half a century ago, and I have known and admired several of your former pastors. You are a flourishing congregation with lively engaging worship. I often livestream your services. In Rebecca and Martha, you have two gifted, faithful preachers and worship leaders. I love your music. You are richly blessed and I give thanks for you,

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Rebecca tells me you’ve been reading “Searching for Sunday” by Rachel Held Evans. I love her writings, and I loved that book.

As you may know, both words for breath in the Bible, ruak in Hebrew, and pneuma in Greek, can also mean wind and spirit, a wonderful ambiguity. I like ambiguity in the Bible; it makes you think.

Rachel Held Evans wrote this about breath: “The Spirit is like breath, as close as the lungs, the chest, the lips, the fogged canvas where little fingers draw hearts, the tide that rises and falls, twenty-three thousand times a day in a rhythm so intimate we forget to notice until it enervates or until a supine yogi says pay attention and its fragile power awes us again. Inhale, exhale, expand, release. In the beginning God breathed.”

We start today with Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones. They were dry. (I’m thinking of Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon on the Tonight Show) “How dry were they?” They were very dry. They had no breath in them, no life in them, no possibilities. 

No possibilities. That’s what I want to reflect with you on today as we stand peering over the edge of Lent into the coming marking of the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s reflect on what it means to have no possibilities. Stanley Hauerwas once said, “The only requirement for resurrection is to be dead.”

So, in our readings for today the bones are dead, and Lazarus is dead.

Let’s start with these dry bones. Who was Ezekiel and what was going on during his time? Let me fill in some of the backstory. Since ancient Israel figures so prominently in our Biblical story it is easy for us to forget that it was never a great power, but a tiny nation perpetually stuck between rising great powers to its north and south. Israel did have a brief heyday under the monarchies of King David and his son Solomon, but after that it was pretty much downhill. The kingdom split in two and had a tragic succession of more or less corrupt kings.

Finally, in 587 BC, after a long and horrific siege, the powerful Babylonian Empire conquered Jerusalem. And they did a very thorough job of extinguishing the national flame of Israel. The three foundations of Israel’s identity at the time were 1. The monarchy. 2. The Temple. and 3. The land.

So, first the Babylonian conquerors murdered the king’s sons before his eyes, put his eyes out and took him captive to Babylon to live out his days. Then they burned the Temple to the ground, along with most of the rest of Jerusalem, and they took ten thousand of the most important surviving citizens in chains back to Babylon, where they stayed in exile for 50 years.

And it is out of this dire period, which we call the Exile, that some of the most profound theology in the Bible was forged, as Israel wrestled with the question of what kind of God must this be who allowed (or perhaps even made) such things to take place. 

From this period, we get the Book of Job’s profound wrestling with the question of evil, we get a handful of our favorite Psalms, and perhaps, most of all, we get Isaiah of the Exile, who didn’t know at the time that he was writing a good bit of the libretto for Handel’s Messiah. And we get the prophet Ezekiel and his vivid vision of the valley of the dry bones.

So, Israel in Exile had all the necessary conditions for resurrection. It was dead. It had no possibilities. Their important things were lost and gone. They had lost their land. They had no monarchy. They had no place to worship. They were in exile, far from home, far from their beloved Zion, which is both the name of the mountain on which the temple had stood, and a nickname for Jerusalem.

Psalm 137, made famous as a song in Godspell, expresses their lament for their lost life:

“By the rivers of Babylon—

there we sat down and there we wept

when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there

we hung up our lyres.

For there our captors

asked us for songs,

and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

But how could we sing the Lord’s song

in a foreign land?”

That is the context in which God speaks to (or through) the prophet Ezekiel who is in exile up in Babylon with his wife. The dry bones are the house of Israel. They had lost everything.

Did you ever lose everything, or thought you did?

I did. I’m here to tell you another story of the loss of possibilities. It is partly my story, mostly God’s story, and before I am finished, I hope you can recognize it in some sense as your story, too. It is a story about discovering God in one’s losses. It is a story about grace, and gratitude. It is a story of reversals.

The story I want to tell today begins twenty-six years ago on a warm August morning when I had a catastrophic bicycle accident while riding in a century ride, a hundred-mile ride. I went over the handlebars of my bike and hit my head. I suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) that left me profoundly disabled. I had trouble sleeping. I had a constant ringing in my ears. I had been a choral singer since the age of six, but I couldn’t even listen to music. My brain couldn’t process it. Music was just noise. I had trouble praying (and I’m a praying guy). God seemed remote if not entirely. absent

I had a nearly a decade of very poor health, including suffering  from a severe clinical depression. Because of my accident and illness, I suffered a series of losses. In addition to losing my health, I eventually had to give up my pastorate, and so, I lost, all at once, my job, my vocation, my community and my home, since we lived in a parsonage. 

And an accident or chronic illness is a family affair. It doesn’t just affect you, but also those around you. At one point I asked my wife, Martha, why she didn’t leave me. She said, “I would never leave you!” I said, “I would leave me if I could.” Rebecca was a junior in High School at the time.

So, we had some very difficult years, and then about nine years later something remarkable happened. I got better. I went off all my medications. I was no longer a depressed guy with a brain injury, just a guy with a brain injury, which I can assure you is a big improvement. 

And gradually even my brain injury improved some. Neurologists used to believe that when parts of the brain died the functions they controlled were lost forever. Now they are learning through MRI brain imagining that other parts of the brain can restore lost functions. It’s called neuroplasticity. As a former basketball player, I like to think of it as if other parts of the brain “come off the bench” to help out the team. We don’t use the word recovery, but I did gradually improve and got some of my life back.

My story would be a more typical American success story if I could tell you I did something really heroic or courageous to get better, but I didn’t. I didn’t pull myself up by my spiritual bootstraps. No, but I had lots of help, especially from my family, but also from the church we joined.

And I began writing again and preaching again now and then, something I couldn’t have done before. And in 2010 I started singing again, and I’m now in my 16th year singing with  the fabulous Berkshire Lyric Chorus, and on May 31, I will be singing St Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. And on August 7, we are singing in the Shed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and opening for YoYo Ma. How cool is that? And here I am!

So, I live in gratitude for this unexpected chapter in my life. I’m grateful to be alive, and to enjoy my two children and my four grandchildren. I’ve had my losses. My Mom died when I was 18, and my Dad died when I was 34. I treasure each new day I am given.

I’ve been reading about J. S. Bach’s time at the cusp of the Enlightenment when the pseudo-science of alchemy claimed that with something called a “philosopher’s stone,” one could turn lead into gold. It isn’t true, but In my experience the real magic is turning suffering and loss into faith, hope and love.

And so, this is where I hope you find this big story that is mostly God’s story and partly my story to be something of your story, too. To accept that you can be honest in admitting that our world is broken, and that in some sense, you are broken as well. That you can realize that your own vulnerabilities and neediness are not flaws, but the very conditions for recognizing and receiving the gracious generosity of God, who loves us with a vast love through Jesus Christ our Savior.

I often find that people in the recovery community are better at understanding this than many Christians. Their first step is to admit that in themselves, they are powerless; lacking in possibilities of their own making. The turn to a “higher power” One of my favorite writers is Anne Lamott, herself in recovery. Do you know her writing? If not, you should. She writes, “The difference between you and God is that God doesn’t think He’s you.”

The Bible is a story about a God who makes a way when there is no way. God breathes into the dry bones and they live. Jesus tells Lazarus, four days dead, to come out, and he does. Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life, he that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

I was ordained fifty years ago last September 21st in the Newton Highlands Congregational Church by the Metropolitan Boston Association of the United Church of Christ. Hands were laid upon me, and the Holy Spirit of God was invoked over me. 

Since that day, I have stood at countless pulpits and at countless gravesides, and I have repeated those words of Jesus over the bodies of the dead. “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” “Can these bones live?” Can Lazarus live? Can we live? Catch your breath, and walk with the church from Lent into Holy Week, in confident faith in the God whose Spirit still hovers over creation, and whose breath still revives that which had been dead, and who makes a way where there appears to be no way. Amen.

(I preached this sermon on March 22, 2026 at the Trinitarian Congregational Church in Concord, Massachusetts, where my daughter is the Senior Minister. To watch a YouTube video of this sermon go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbdxoEpKmYA&t=1237s)

Unknown's avatar

Shrimp Pad Thai

by

Shrimp Pad Thai

 

 

This Pad Thai is relatively easy stir-fry to make, but it requires a bit of time for chopping and prep.

Ingredients

 

12 oz wide rice sticks

3 TBS peanut Oil

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or put through a garlic press

4 scallions cut in 2 in. pieces

½ TBS finely chopped fresh ginger

1 lb. large shrimp, shelled and deveined

2 Eggs, beaten

4 oz snow peas

½ sliced red bell pepper

1 cup bean sprouts, rinsed and drained

½ cup chopped roasted peanuts (for garnish)

½ cup of chopped cilantro (for garnish)

Lime wedges (for serving)

Red pepper flakes to taste (optional)

 

Sauce

1 TBS fish sauce

1 TBS tamarind paste

1 TBS Chinese cooking wine or dry sherry

 

Recipe

 

Place the rice sticks in a large bowl and cover with hot tap water for 30 minutes. Chop the garlic, scallions and ginger and place on a small plate and set aside. Slice the bell pepper and set aside. Bring a small pot of water to a boil, poach the snow peas for one minute, drain and spray with cold water. Set aside. Beat the eggs and set aside.

In a small bowl mix the fish sauce, tamarind paste, and cooking wine and set aside.

You may use a wok, but I prefer to use my 12 in. stainless-steel skillet. Heat oil in the pan over medium high heat. When the oil is hot, toss in the ginger, garlic and scallions and stir fry for 30 seconds. Toss in the red pepper. Toss in the shrimp and stir-fry until pink, about 3 minutes. Stir in the sauce and mix well. Reduce heat to medium low and add the drained rice noodles and toss and fold them into the pan. Repeat with the drained bean sprouts. Keep stir-frying for several minutes until everything is coated with the sauce and is hot. Turn the Pad Thai into a warm serving dish and top with the peanuts and cilantro. Serve with lime wedges. An Alsatian Riesling or an Asian beer would go nicely with it.

 

 

 

 

Unknown's avatar

The Ten Most Popular Posts in 2025

by

These ten were the top visited posts and pages in 2025. None of them were written this year, and most of them are sermons from the archives. Although I am posting less frequently these days, the old stuff remains much visited. The Ferlinghetti poem had an impressive 20, 774 hits. If you read it you will know why it is a poem for our time.

Just a friendly reminder that this is an open-source free site, and you are free to share content with attribution. But remember “Thou shalt not steal!” I appreciate your support. Thanks for coming by and come again in 2026. (Photo: Tierney Wildlife Refuge in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. © R.L. Floyd)

“Pity the Nation” A Poem for our Time by Lawrence Ferlinghetti  

Why did Jesus refer to Herod as “That fox” in Luke 13:32”?  

“Distracted by Many Things” A Sermon on Luke 10:38-42  

“Breaking chains, Opening Doors” A Sermon on Acts 16:16-34    

“Ask, Search, Knock.” A Sermon on Luke 11: 1-13

“The God who Still Speaks” A Sermon on John 16

“Building Bigger Barns” A Sermon on Luke 13-21

“Growing Up” A Sermon on Galatians 3: 23-29

“The Healing Touch” A Sermon on Mark 1: 40-45

“Of Fig Trees and Second Chances” A Sermon on Luke 13:6-9

Unknown's avatar

I Was Ordained Fifty Years Ago Today

by

On this day fifty years ago, September 21, 1975, I was ordained into the Christian Ministry of Word and Sacrament at the Newton Highlands Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts. I was 26.

I had had my ecclesiastical council weeks before and waited for a call for a church before I could be ordained. Late in the summer it came. I was called to be the pastor of the Congregational Churches of Limerick and West Newfield, a “Two-point charge” serving two small congregations nine miles apart in the Northwest corner of York County, Maine. I had preached my neutral pulpit sermon in nearby Fryeburg, and a candidating sermon in each of the two churches.

I remember my ordination vividly. The church secretary, Irene Fultz, had designed. printed and mailed out the invitations. My family was there. My Associate Conference Minister, Oliver Powell, was there. The Reverend Joanne Hartunian, represented the Metropolitan Boston Association. The Reverend Meredith (Jerry) B. Handspicker, presided over the Laying on of Hands, and gave the Prayer of Ordination (after the ordained ministers were assembled he invited the whole congregation to participate, the first time I had seen this. It is commonplace now in the UCC.) The Reverend Walter Telfer, Director of Field Education, gave a Charge to the Congregation. The Reverend Michael J. Maguire led the congregation in a prayer of Confession. I presided at Holy Communion and gave the Benediction for the first time. The Reverend Dudne M. Breeze, our pastor, gave the sermon. He admonished me to be a Minister of the Word of God. I now know how wise that counsel was and how hard it would be.

I served those two little churches for four years and have never been happier. I married Martha while there and those churches threw us a big party. I trained as an EMT and became a firefighter.

Next, we went to Bangor, where I was Chaplain at Bangor Theological Seminary and Associate Pastor of the Hammond Street Church, United Church of Christ. There I ministered to students and congregants. I was a founder of Maine Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC) a national anti-war organization. I chaired the Social Justice Committee of the Maine Council of Churches.

Finally, I came to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1982 to be the Pastor of the First Church of Christ in Pittsfield. I had three sabbaticals from there: Oxford (1989), St Andrews (1995) and Cambridge (2000). I studied and wrote articles and books while on those wonderful respites from active ministry.

I stayed in Pittsfield for twenty-two years and would have stayed longer if I hadn’t sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a bicycle accident and had to retire early on disability. That crash was exactly 25 years ago and equally divides my ministry into before and after my disability.

I eventually discovered a new chapter in my life. I started writing. I wrote hymns. I started this blog, I wrote devotions for the United Church of Christ’s Daily Devotional, and I found a new ministry of the Word in my words. I became active in the First Congregational Church of Stockbridge.

So, there you have it. Here I am 50 years later. I once kept count of how many weddings I officiated at, but I have lost count well into several hundred. The same for baptisms, confirmations. I can’t count the hospital visits, the funerals and graveside committals I was part of. I’ve held people’s hands in Rehab Facilities and Psychiatric Wards. I’ve put my arms around people in overwhelming grief. I’ve been humbled by theses encounters.

I have heard numerous confessions. I have listened to more kinds of human consternation and misery than you can imagine. I have also been privileged to be part of people’s lives at some of their more poignant moments. I have shared many joys and sorrows. I have “wept with those who weep, and rejoiced with those who have rejoiced.” (Romans 12:15)

I have led countless Bible Studies and other courses for adults. I have authored “A Course in Basic Christianity” for adults. I think of it as a course to teach you “everything you should have learned in Confirmation Class, but probably didn’t because you had your mind on other things.”

I’ve valued the relationships of my clergy friends and colleagues in the United Church of Christ and other Christian denominations. I served  the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ as their representative to the Massachusetts Commission on Christian Unity for twelve years. There, I made many friends and came to appreciate the richness of the “Great Church” of Jesus Christ.

I have also treasured the relationships I have had with my Jewish brothers and sisters in the clergy. We have become trusted friends and interlocators, and in that safe space of friendship have had rich and deep conversations about both what unites and divides us. It was a great honor that the family of my dear friend Rabbi Harold Salzmann asked me to speak at his funeral at Temple Anshe Amunin in Pittsfield.

I’ve witnessed people’s lives changed by their confrontation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I, myself, have been profoundly changed by a life-long engagement with Jesus and his Gospel of freedom and grace. Jesus is still the most interesting and engaging part of our faith, and after fifty years he is still the one with whom I have to deal in thought and deed and prayer.

I have struggled to be faithful to the truth as I have known it. My reach has exceeded my grasp. I have pondered the deep things of the faith and have written countless articles, papers, and three and a half books. I have spent years trying to reform my denomination and restore its historic theological and ecumenical vision through leadership in such activities as the Confessing Christ movement, the Mercersburg Society, and the Craigville Colloquies.

I have also, to be quite honest, been a leader throughout my fifty year ministry, in an enterprise that is in decline in institutional vigor and societal esteem. The schools where I received my masters and my doctorate are no longer there. The mainline church in whose rocky vineyard I have labored is smaller, poorer, and less respected than it was before I began. My last church, where I served for 22 years,  sold its grand gothic meeting house to another congregation, and merged with a nearby UCC church.

But I do not despair about this. God will not be left without witnesses. The church of the future, I believe, will be smaller, leaner, and more faithful. People won’t go because it’s “the thing to do” as it once was.

They’ll go because they have found something of great value to which they are committed. Or they will go because they are searching for something important that seems missing in their lives, something more durable, something deeper than the shallow seductions and distractions of our consumer culture that values having more than being.

And society needs the church to model a community that welcomes and values all of God’s children. A space where love is stronger than hate, faith stronger than fear, and kindness and compassion are shown to the vulnerable among us, which is all of us.

So, while I have regrets about my failings and limitations as a minister, I have none about choosing this calling and living it out for five decades. My daughter has chosen to be a pastor, and I watch with awe at how gifted and faithful she is. It is young clergy such as she who give me much hope for the church of the future. I thank God for sustaining me through this long calling, and for calling me in the first place despite my manifold frailties and failures. To God be the glory.

“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.” Amen. —Ephesians 3:20-21.

(This morning in worship, The First Congregational Church of Stockbridge blessed me by prayer and the laying on of hands. A livestream of the service is available on the church’s website.)

Unknown's avatar

Guided by the Spirit. A Sermon on Galatians 5: 1, 13-25

by

“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:1, 13-25)

Prayer: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

”There’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place, and I know that it’s the Spirit of the Lord.“ I want to thank Sean for picking that good old hymn and getting us started on our Spirit-filled worship. We had quite a Spirit-filled Pentecost three weeks ago, didn’t we?  with streamers floating above our heads and everyone dressed in red. But it’s still Pentecost, which is a season and not just a day, a season to explore with some of the implications of being a Spirit-filled people. More particularly I want to explore with you the idea of being guided by the Spirit in our lives. Continue reading →

Unknown's avatar

“Moved to Compassion” A Sermon on Luke 7:1-17

by

“After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly and who was ill and close to death. When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.” And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore, I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me, and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and, turning to the crowd following him, he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow, and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he was moved with compassion for her and said to her, “Do not cry.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stopped. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has visited his people!” This word about him spread throughout the whole of Judea and all the surrounding region. (Luke 7: 1-17)

What makes you cry? What moves you? I may have been an emotional person before I suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury 25 years ago, but I certainly am one now. I get choked up, sometimes even when I’m preaching. If that happens this morning, don’t be concerned. It won’t bother me and it shouldn’t bother you. My TBI makes me “emotionally labile,” but you needn’t have a head injury to be moved to tears. I’m just an extreme case, a literal “head case.” There’s even a word for it: “Tearful or given to weeping.” It is called “lachrymose” from the Latin for “weeping.” Lachrymose: isn’t that a cool word?

There are certain texts or songs that move me to tears. Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech gets me every time. I weep through John 1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

Some of the music that chokes me up is about weeping itself, as in the St. Matthew’s Passion. When Peter weeps after betraying Jesus: “Just then the cock crew. Then Peter remembered the words of Jesus, when he said to him: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And Peter went out and wept bitterly. It’s even more poignant in the German: “bitterlich.”

Or the aptly named “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem. “Full of tears will be that day; When from the ashes shall arise. The guilty man to be judged.” I’ve sung that twice now with Berkshire Lyric at Ozawa Hall and I had to really bear down to get through it both times. Also, the music is really beautiful. Which doesn’t help.

So, I’ve always believed one should pay close attention to these choked-up moments in your life because they mean something important. They mean that something authentic has moved you deeply in your soul.

That is what is going on in our stories today. We have two stories from Luke where Jesus is deeply moved by the suffering of others. He is moved by the centurion’s faith, and he is moved by the grieving widow in Nain, whose only son has died.

Our theme for this morning is compassion, which Jesus both practices and embodies. In telling the story of Jesus, a generation or more after Jesus’s death, Luke is trying to teach the church what God is like, and therefore, what God’s people should be like, a community of compassion.

Remember how Luke describes Jesus reading the Isaiah scroll in his home synagogue in Nazareth. He read:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.”

That was Jesus’s calling: To bring good news to the poor. So, who are the poor? The poor are those who suffer. They may be wealthy or impoverished, but in their suffering they are poor.

In our first story the Roman centurion fears for the life of a favorite slave. In Luke’s view of the Gospel’s inclusivity, even a hated Roman enemy is not outside the scope of Jesus’s love and attention. The centurion is not literally poor, for he is a powerful soldier with authority over a hundred men, but he is poor in his need. His slave is dying and he heard about Jesus and believes Jesus can heal him. Jesus is “amazed” by his faith and heals the slave.

I want to say something about the Greek word translated here as compassion. Compassion literally means “suffering with.” The Greek word here translated as “compassion,” is splagchnizomai (that’s easy for me to say!) It comes from splagchna, which means “intestines; guts.” Jesus’s reaction to the widow’s plight is literally visceral, gut wrenching, brought on by empathy for a mother who lost her child, one of the most difficult of all human experiences.

Jesus also knows that having lost her only son as well as her husband, she is now doubly vulnerable. For in the patriarchal world of the first-century Roman Empire, widows were solely dependent on their male relatives for sustenance and safety. Here is compassion, suffering with the sufferer.

Now Luke’s Gospel describes many acts of compassion by Jesus, but he only uses this particular long hard-to-pronounce word for compassion three times, and the other two are some of your favorite stories that are found only in Luke. Can you guess what they might be? What comes to mind?

First, there is the story of the good Samaritan, who had compassion on the man beaten by brigands and left by the side of the road to die. We see Luke’s universality there, too, since the Samaritan is a hated enemy, who shows mercy after the official representatives of the religious establishment passed by on the other side of the road.

The other example is the story of the waiting father and his two sons. The father sees the lost prodigal from far off and has compassion for him.

So, likewise, Jesus is moved to compassion for the widow. Picture with me these two processions that meet outside the city gate in the village of Nain. One is a procession of death, with the dead son on a stretcher, his bereaved mother, and a great crowd of mourners headed to the graveyard.

The other is a procession of life, with Jesus, his disciples, and a great crowd of exuberant followers. The two processions collide, and the procession of life wins. Jesus raises the dead son from death to life, the first time he does this.

Why does Luke place this here in his story? Soon, in Luke 7:22, Jesus will tell John the Baptist’s disciples to report back to John that they have seen and heard miraculous signs and wonders, including the raising of the dead

The Good News that Jesus brings means the leveling of established positions and privilege. My teacher and friend, Max Stackhouse, went to India for a year with his family, where Max was a guest professor at United Theological Seminary in Bangalore. It was a life-changing experience for Max, who came to view the Indian caste system as a great systemic evil.

He told me how the Good News of Jesus was powerfully attractive to the lowest castes in India. Christians make up only 2.3% of the population, and many of them had been Dalits, whom we once labeled “Untouchables.”

Jesus comes with good news for the poor, the last, the least and the lost of society. He touches the Untouchables. And he comes with good news for us, the privileged, who are also poor in our own ways.

Henri Nouwen once described Jesus’ life of compassion as the “path of downward mobility.” Jesus chooses suffering, rejection, and death rather than the path of “upward mobility” toward privilege and power.

Jesus didn’t reach down and lift the poor up from above. He became poor “he suffered with” and according to Luke, it was this very suffering that led him to the cross, “for us and all people.” Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection are what enables redemption, atonement, indeed, relief from suffering for all humanity.

Jesus’ “path of downward mobility” differs from the idea today that compassion means helping “those less fortunate than we are.”

One of the things I truly love about the Cathedral of the Beloved is the way the leaders erase the distinction between the helpers and the help-ees. Sure, we prepare a meal to serve, but we all eat it together in a community. The Food Program at United Church of Christ, Pittsfield, does the same thing; you can’t tell whose is there for food or there to volunteer. Sometimes those groups overlap. And this gives everyone dignity and erases the stigma.

In Jesus we see this important distinction between compassion and pity. Jesus knows you can’t love down, from a place above or apart. Even some of the terms we use, such as “the underprivileged,” or the “less fortunate” keep us above those we serve, who like us, are beloved children of God.

Real compassion, as embodied by Jesus, runs counter to our culture’s constant call for success, achievement and wealth. Real compassion is a call to suffer with the powerless.

A Christian faith true to the life and teachings of Jesus should never seek to be powerful and rise above others. That is why I have condemned Christian Nationalism, and the popular and rich preachers of the Prosperity Gospel as being false to what Jesus stood for.

We are not in a society that honors or displays much compassion. This very week the richest man in the world cut aid, food, and medicine, to the poorest people on earth, some of whom will now die. We daily see new polices that are the opposite of compassion, they are cruel and mean and go to the heart of who we are as a country. And in my opinion, the cruelty is not a bug, but a feature. It’s the point. The obscene worship of wealth and power is directly opposite of what Jesus taught and who he was.

There has been some push-back from the Christian Church. We’ve seen a brave Episcopal bishop, Marianne Budde, gently entreat the President to have mercy on the scared and vulnerable. The Roman Catholic church has declared the war on immigrants to be incompatible with Catholic Social Teaching. The Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Elizabeth Eaton, has spoken out about misinformation on social media about her church’s funding when General Flynn tweeted that the Lutheran Church was “a money-laundering scheme.” Our own United Church of Christ has spoken out, and there is an Immigration Support Meeting  today at 2:30.

So, what can we do? I have two suggestions. First, I suggest we partner with any groups on the ground who are working to implement compassion for those who are suffering. Our UCC Conference has lists of organizations that are helping immigrants.

Secondly, let us continue to be a laboratory of the compassionate community. Let us continue to live out the radical inclusivity that Jesus taught and embodied. Let is continue to be faithful to our covenant, and to being “Open and Affirming” to all people. Let us pray with and for each other and support each other. Let us tell the truth in love, and not give in to our fears. Let us reach out to those in our communities that are being harmed.

Finally, let us be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, our Risen Lord and Savior. We may not be the powerful of society, but we are not powerless. There is a different kind of power available to us through him who loved us. For I am convinced that nothing will separate us from the love of God, not life or death, not oligarchs and autocrats. Nothing will separate us from the of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.  And the truth of that moves me deeply and chokes me up! Amen.

(I preached this sermon on February 9, 2025 at the First Congregational Church at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. A YouTube video of the service is here:)

Unknown's avatar

Roast Rosemary Pork Tenderloin with Raspberry Sauce

by

Pork

My granddaughter celebrated her eighth birthday right before Christmas, and we asked her if she had any requests for her birthday dinner. She said, “I want Bompas’ (that’s me) pork tenderloin!” Somewhere she was served a memorable one with raspberry sauce, and I’ve tried to reproduce it for her several times with varying critical responses. She deemed this one pretty good, so I will share it with you. Continue reading →

Unknown's avatar

My Top Ten Posts of All Time

by

Onota Lake

It has been my custom to share my top ten most viewed posts of the year, but since I only posted seven times in 2024, I’ve decided to share my top ten posts of all time. I started this blog in 2009 and this is the fewest posts I’ve done in a year. Ironically, 2024 had the most views of any year. Here they are with the number of times they have been viewed: Continue reading →